(no subject)

[conuly]

I love this column.

The issues are petty and trivial, and the answers rise to the challenge.

Karen writes: My husband, David, hates Bundt cake. I believe he was scarred by grotesque Bundt-shaped 1970s recipes. But he likes cake. Please order him to try it.

I appreciate David’s phobia, as I just happened to watch the YouTuber B. Dylan Hollis use a Bundt pan to make a 1969 recipe for tuna Jell-O salad. Content warning: traumatically gross. Hollis’s channel is devoted to making all kinds of weird, antique recipes (tomato soup cake, ground pork fruitcake, etc.) and certainly confirms the Bundt pan’s repulsive midcentury intersection with gelatinous “salads.” But the Bundt is just a shape, a vessel that cannot be blamed for its disgusting passengers. If David eats standard cake, I order him to eat one in the delightful Bundt format. In fact, make it Hollis’s re-creation of 1956’s chocolate mayonnaise cake, which actually looks amazing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/magazine/judge-john-hodgman-on-fearing-the-bundt-cake.html

Comments

[adafrog]

lol

[pauamma]

I think I was just hit with some kind of brain reading dysfunction, or possibly hallucinating. I just saw the words "chocolate" and "mayonnaise" in what appears to be a single noun phrase.

[conuly]

Joke's on him, the cake is supposed to be surprisingly palatable.

[pauamma]

If by "him" you meant me:

- Thanks for confirming I wasn't hallucinating or misreading.
- I do find that wording unappealing enough to put me off from even trying the recipe or any cake coming out of it.
- I have no idea how any of the above is a joke.

[conuly]

...why would I call you "him" in a response to you? The columnist is the one who is "him".

[pauamma]

Thanks for the clarification. (Mistyping happens. This could conceivably have been an instance.)

[bibliofile]

Mayo is (normally) just egg and oil, whipped together. In a cake recipe, mayo can function as a substitute for egg and, you guessed it, oil.

(Note: This does not work as well with mayo-related substances, e.g. "salad dressing"/Miracle Whip.)

[bibliofile]

I should also say that I've seen those recipes in vintage booklets, The Joys of Jell-O. Used to see them regularly for cheap in thrift stores and library book sales.

[cellio]

Please tell me the author is making up those disgusting concoctions. Tuna jell-o salad? Tomato soup cake? shudder

[conuly]

No, and no.

The Tuna Jello Salad is probably a mid-century attempt to redo aspic, and it probably isn't so bad with plain gelatin.

The tomato soup cake is a Depression-era recipe and apparently comes out as a very strong spice cake. All the spices hide the tomato, is my guess.

[vvalkyri]

My grandmother would make a tomato soup cake. It was extremely good. I found a recipe that involves also using tomato soup cans and that seems like effort so I should keep looking, but it's probably a recipe off a box. And yeah it's a spice cake.

[vvalkyri]

There's a whole gallery of regrettable foods you might want to go look up. They were very very into suspending stuff in clear gelatin in the 50s

[conuly]

Aspic made easy.